Titicut Follies portrays the existence of occupants of Bridgewater, some of them catatonic, holed up in unlit cells, and only periodically washed. It also depicts inmates/patients required to strip naked publicly, force feeding, and indifference and bullying on the part of many of the institution's staff.
In the 1970s, a large castle is used by the US Government as an insane asylum for military personnel. Among the many patients there is a former astronaut, Billy Cutshaw (Scott Wilson), who aborted a moon launch and was dragged screaming from the capsule, suffering from an apparent mental breakdown.
The picaresque story follows its protagonist, Pasqualino (Giannini) who, as a dandy and small-time hood in Naples, to save the family honour, is sent to prison for killing a pimp (and then dissecting the victim and placing the body in suitcases) who had turned Pasqualino's sister into a prostitute. Convicted and sent to prison, Pasqualino succeeds in being transferred to a psychiatric ward. Desperate to get out, he volunteers for the Italian Army, but then somewhere in Germany he deserts with a comrade. They are captured and sent to a concentration camp. There, in a bid to save his own life, Pasqualino decides to survive by providing sexual favors to the obese and ugly female commandant (Stoler). His plan succeeds, except for the fact that he is then put in charge of the barracks as a kapo, and is obliged to select six men to be killed under the threat that if he doesn't do so, they will all be killed. Pasqualino ends up executing the soldier with whom he was captured and being responsible for the death of another fellow prisoner, a Spanish anarchist. At the war's end, upon his return to Naples, Pasqualino discovers that his seven sisters, his fiancée and even his mother have all survived through prostitution.
Aura (Asia Argento), a young woman suffering from anorexia escapes from a psychiatric hospital and meets a young man, David (Christopher Rydell), who offers to let her stay with him rather than go back to the hospital. However, Aura is soon caught, but her return to the hospital coincides with the start of a string of murders of hospital staff members, past and present. The killer decapitates them using a home-made garrote device on rainy days. When her father is murdered along with her mother, Aura and David team up to find the killer.
Englar Alheimsins, which has often been called an Icelandic One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, is the story of an Icelandic man named Páll (Ingvar E. Sigurðsson). After his girlfriend leaves him he's slowly turning into a state of madness and depression. His parents decide to send him to a mental hospital where he meets Óli (Baltasar Kormákur), who believes he's the songwriter for The Beatles, Viktor (Björn Jörundur Friðbjörnsson), who signs cheques with the signature of Adolf Hitler, and other special characters. The movie depicts his struggle, in and out of the mental hospital.
Cheryl Draper (Barbara Stanwyck), while looking out her bedroom window, witnesses a young woman being strangled to death. The woman reports the killing to the police, but when the man named Albert Richter (George Sanders) notices detectives arriving downstairs, he moves the body. When the police show up to his door, Richter acts nonchalant, and when no body is found, the police are convinced that the woman saw something in her dreams.
The plot concerns a doctor at a run-down psychiatric hospital, who is offered a large sum of money to shelter a new patient. Soon the place is full of suspicious and secretive characters, all apparently international secret agents trying to find out who and what the patient is.
Le professeur Charles Conway est un savant fou qui espère découvrir le secret de la jeunesse éternelle en faisant des expériences sur des glandes situées dans le cerveau. Il utilise comme cobayes des personnes dépressives, sans familles et sans attaches, qui pensent être soignées pour leur dépression. Toutefois, les expériences du Pr. Conway tournent mal et ses cobayes deviennent des sortes de zombies…
This is a story of a nurse in a psychiatric hospital, played by Suchitra Sen. Sen's character is a part of a team exploring new therapy for patients who have suffered emotional trauma. The approach taken by the team is to offer these individuals an emotional resort, which is where Sen's character plays her part. Her role is to act as a friend and a lover for the patient, but at the same time, refrain from any emotional involvement on her own part as her role is purely that of a nurse who is helping the patient recover. She has to repeatedly break the emotional attachments that she experiences because as a nurse, she is a part of therapy.
Colonel Sahab is a doctor in a psychiatry ward and Nurse Radha (Waheeda Rahman) is heart-broken after a civilian patient, Dev Kumar (Dharmendra), whom she cared for, pouring out her love and affection, leaves the hospital, as she had been unable to keep her heart separate from her professional work and had fallen in love with her patient. Next Arun Choudury (Rajesh Khanna), a writer and poet enters as a patient, suffering acute mania after being rejected by his lover, Sulekha. After refusing to take his care, Radha relents and starts nursing him. In between while caring for Arun she reminisces her past and tells a story of how she took care of injured brave army soldiers when she was posted in Laddakh during the Sino-Indian war of 1962.
A young woman, Janice, is living with her restrictive and conservative parents, who lead a dull working-class life, and consider their daughter to be "misbehaving" whenever she's trying to find her own way in life. When she becomes pregnant, they force her into abortion, and hypocritically blame her for "upsetting them" when she is unable to cope with the emotional and mental effect this has on her. Janice is subjected to shockingly self-righteous and ignorant doctors.